Wake-up call group captivates students

A student group at Shanghai Jiao Tong University that provides members with morning wake-up calls has people from both inside and outside the school lining up to join, the group's founder told the Global Times Wednesday.

The initial burst of interest in the group has left its founder, undergraduate Su Haihong, scrambling to match up members, some of whom, he acknowledged, have begun using the group for purposes other than getting to class on time.

The Get Up Association has received more than 1,500 application e-mails since Su introduced the club last month in an online post. The post has received more than 150,000 page views.

Su said he was stunned by the number of applicants and never expected to receive applications from outside the city, some of which came from overseas. "My peers and I are busy pairing up members, even as more e-mails arrive each day," he said.

The group was inspired by a wake-up call student club at Peking University in Beijing, Su said. Similar to the Peking University organization, Su's group matches up students to wake each other up with a phone call each morning, but with a twist devised by Su. In his group, the members are all organized into pairs of men and women.

Su said he thought that pairing up men and women would make the group more interesting.

Currently, the group suffers from a slight shortfall of women because more men have applied. "We have received a lot of letters from male students at several top engineering and science schools, where there are more boys than girls," said Su, a student at the School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering.

Women from several local universities with larger populations of female students, such as Shanghai International Studies University and the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, have also joined the group, Su said. The group matches students by location and the time they want to wake up, though female applicants get priority because of the shortfall.

"Girls usually demand a patient boy with a nice voice," Su said. "We have had situations where girls have complained that their partners are rude or lecture them if they refuse to get up."

Some female participants have demanded a partner from a specific university, such as Tsinghua University or Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Su said.

The group does not give out the members' names to their partners, only their phone numbers, Su said.

There have been occasions when members have asked to change partners after learning their real name and checking them out online, Su said.

Li Yang, a counselor teacher at the university, told the Global Times that the group is under the supervision of the university and only university students are allowed to join to ensure student safety.